When you're excited about your product or service, you have so many messages that you would like to deliver to your potential customers. You're eager to inform them about how your product can meet their needs and how your offering is vastly superior to the competition. The hard truth, however, is that you won't be able to get more than a very few messages across to your target audience.

Customers need to hear a message over and over before they remember it, and even then the message must be simple and to the point. Thus, a good marketing message conveys major company or product themes in one-sentence or two-sentence expressions that can be repeated over and over. In fact, these messages must be included in one way or another in company communication as much as possible.

Before you invest in your marketing message, test it on a target audience. Make sure that they get the message — and that they don't get the wrong one. The message-testing questionnaire can help you polish up your message so that it shines.

The following links take you to the tools and information you need to create the right marketing messages for your business and for your customers.

• Learn the key concepts of messaging (Article)
  Learn how appraising your customers' characteristics, attitudes, and behavior pays off as you develop your messages.
• Create a message testing survey using a SharePoint site (Article)
  Use Windows SharePoint Services to create a message testing survey.
• Message testing questionnaire (Template)
  Use this Word template to test messages with your target audience.